Tsai Ing-wen opens first campaign office

By Vincent Y. Chao / Staff Reporter

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) opened her first campaign office in Taipei yesterday.

Two months after being selected as the party’s candidate, Tsai and other senior campaign officials showed up for the first day of work at the downtown office, the same location that headquartered her campaign for the DPP presidential primary.

Tsai is expected to begin speeding up campaign preparations for the upcoming election, which is expected to begin in earnest in the fall, with the poll date set for Jan. 14 next year.

Located above a bank, the office is large enough to accommodate up to 60 employees, although campaign officials say her election headquarters, to be set up later in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Banciao District (板橋), will be “much larger.”

The DPP announced on Wednesday last week that former premiers Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Yu Shyi-kun would take up key roles in Tsai’s campaign office.

KEEPING A DISTANCE?

While the three DPP power brokers had separate offices, Tsai campaign officials struggled to answer when asked why the office of Su, Tsai’s main rival during the presidential primary, was the farthest from the DPP chairperson.

“Is there a distance? It seems about the same,” said Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青), a Tsai spokesperson who has reprised the role she played during Tsai’s failed bid for New Taipei City (新北市) mayor last year.

She said the location of Su’s office, three doors down from Tsai, “was not a problem.”

SAME ROLES

Most party directors will also be reprising their roles in Tsai’s campaign office, including DPP international affairs director Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), polling director Chen Chun-lin (陳俊麟) and youth affairs director Lee Cheng-yi (李政毅).